


Ghost With A Beating Heart

by Ginger Jam (skylite), skylite



Category: Marvel Comics - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-15
Updated: 2002-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:52:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylite/pseuds/Ginger%20Jam, https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylite/pseuds/skylite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>DISCLAIMER:  Characters named in the following story are property of Marvel Entertainment, used without permission, and not for profit.  This story takes place in between the first few panels of Agent X #4.  There is precious little to go on about Mary Zero,  so I made it up as I went along.  </p><p>Mary Zero is an African American mutant, age 14, who I took to immediately upon spotting her.  She needed fic, because I figured I wouldn't see much of her after her debut. I was right. Haven't seen or heard of her since.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Ghost With A Beating Heart

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: Characters named in the following story are property of Marvel Entertainment, used without permission, and not for profit. This story takes place in between the first few panels of Agent X #4. There is precious little to go on about Mary Zero, so I made it up as I went along. 
> 
> Mary Zero is an African American mutant, age 14, who I took to immediately upon spotting her. She needed fic, because I figured I wouldn't see much of her after her debut. I was right. Haven't seen or heard of her since.

They say mutants are monsters. 

I'm not a monster. Not even when I try. I couldn't be. I don't have super-tough-armory-leathery-rhino skin. I don't shoot beams out my eyes. I don't have the strength to pick up a city bus and flip it like a quarter.

I can't even reach in your head and pull out what scares you, or twist your mind so you'll be my willing slave. 

The most I can manage by way of being an 'evil' mutant is petty theft, and hey -- guess what, now? You can do that without a mutant ability. 

I'm a mutant, and my power? Hah. Yeah, sure, you'd call it that if you were a really depressed teenager maybe, or somebody looking to duck trouble. 

Me? I'm Mary Zero, and my mutant 'power' is to exist in no mind but my own -- and that of my man, the love of my life, Alex Hayden. So what if I'm 14 and he's all old and decroded? He's the only one who can see me! In all of New York City, he's the only one who can see me, talk to me. Do you realize how special that is? Nobody sees me. Nobody hears my voice. Nobody realizes it was me if I kick them in the shins. They'll just rationalize it away. 

I can have anything I want -- except a life. I'm almost a ghost with a beating heart. I'm not even a shadow, not even a glimpse out the corner of your eye. I eat okay. A hotdog off a vendor's stand here. An ice cream out a cart there; a plate out some fat cat's big deal dinner party, or help myself out the deli. Nobody ever notices. Nobody ever sees.

Except me, of course. I look in the mirror and I can see me. I have big brown eyes, and brown skin. And brown hair that I keep in a 'fro old school style, yo, except for the braid behind my right ear. I look like my moms, except my moms doesn't even remember having a 14 year old daughter named Mary. She doesn't remember she bought me The Color Purple when I turned 10. She said, "You're old enough to understand this now. You're old enough to see what it was like back then, and why we must fight, every day, to make the blood and pain of our ancestors worth it." I saw it and thought it was sad. And scary. Didn't understand the sex parts then, but I do now. The Suncoast video zoners looked all confused when it started playing on their display screen, and they gave up turning it off after I turned it back on five times.

I was thirteen when my mutant nature decided to come on out. Thirteen. And the world decided all at once to dis me. It was my first boys and girls party. I had on this fly little blue dress that my older sister Taisha said would make Jamal Washington notice I was a girl, finally. She'd hotcombed my hair and then put it up in curlers for me, and moms, she'd gotten a nice cake from Junior's in Brooklyn and a whole big spread. I was in the middle of opening presents when the cramps came and doubled me over. Moms had said the cramps were part of becoming a woman and that I best stay in school, keep my legs closed, and not be comin' home with no babies. She'd said the cramps would be bad, but I thought I was gonna die. I screamed. 

I screamed.

I screamed and nobody came.

Nobody came because nobody heard.

When I finally had ridden out the pain enough so I could stand up, I realized what had happened. I could wave my hand right in front of Taisha's eyes, and she never saw me. I could kiss Jamal Washington full on the mouth just like in the movies, and he'd never notice. It might've been cool if it hadn't come with the pain. It might've been neat if itd been temporary. It might've been fun if I could control it. But it hurt. And it hurt not even close to as much as it hurt to watch the party suddenly turn from my birthday party to Taisha's; and that didn't hurt nearly as much as it hurt to see my mother forget she even had me. And that didn't hurt nearly as much as my mother turning my room into a guest room, and trashing what Taisha didn't ask to keep. None of that hurt as much as knowing I couldn't make them see me. I can pick up the phone and dial it, but they don't hear my voice on the other end. I can jump up and down kickin' up a ruckus at a store but the security cams never spot me.

It's true what they say; people rationalize what they don't understand. I looked it up in a book. I have plenty of time to read now.

I go to school, still, sometimes. When I'm bored. 

There are a lot of mutants in New York. But even the mutant kids who can see through walls, and the ones who see dead people like that boy in the movie, and the ones who can hear what they're talkin' about in Detroit ...can't see or hear me. That's why I changed my name to Mary Zero. I'm a Zero. A cypher in the eyes of the world. 

I even looked up that fancy-schmancy school upstate. No big deal to hop on a train when nobody can see you to kick you off for not buying a ticket. Walked all up in their house, and they never noticed me. None of their security devices went off. None of their cameras took a picture of me.

And none of their people ever knew I was there.

Not the lady doctor who goes 'whamp' when somebody wings something at her. Not the pretty boy who turns blacker-than-blackety-black and gets strong. Not the white haired lady who was in for a checkup by the blue doctor, who had dreads like Whoopi but was way, way, way cooler. Not even that big skank with the wings, who thinks her shit don't stink 'cause she's got booty and she knows how to use it.

Even the lady with the fiery red hair couldn't read my mind. Not the spooky blonde mindreader lady [whose mother shoulda told her to go home and put on the rest of that outfit], neither. Not even the bald guy in charge, or the quiet guy in the weird facemask. All those big gun mutants. All those people with power to change the world, or destroy it. And not one of them could tell Mary Zero was in the house.

They're supposed to be able to help mutants, but they couldn't help me. How messed up is that? They don't even know they can't help me. Hard to blame them for not knowing. I just hoped that someone there would be able to see me and make me real again to the rest of the world. But they don't know. They don't know they can't help me. 

Nobody knows they can't help me.

I can only help myself. And since Alex Hayden's the only one who can see me, he's the one I'm helpin' myself to. He'll get over the fact that I'm 14, soon enough. He has to, right? If he leaves me, I'll be alone in a world full of people again, and that's not a prospect I wanna face, all right?

He's a little crazy, but he's good people. Took one look and said I look skinny an' took me out for Latverian food. The waitress thinks he's more nuts than that, because she can't see me sitting across the table from him. 

Zero plus one is one. And I'm not leaving the side of the one who can see me, not ever. Not even if he finds a way to make the world see me again. There has to be something special about him that he could see me when nobody else can. That means I oughta stick with him.

I may be only a ghost with a beating heart, but from this day forward, it beats for you, Alex.

\--end--


End file.
